Mind your own energy!

In 1807 Thomas Young first used the word ENERGY in its modern sense, from the greek word energeia meaning activity. Some time later, about 1824, the Prime Minister of England asked Michael Faraday, a pioneer of electromagnetism, just what use electricity was; to which Faraday is supposed to have replied, why, someday you can tax it.

Energy was no-one’s business.

Even if this ironic story grew with dramatic hindsight, we now have the situation, and this has never happened before in history, where states supply and indeed monopolise all the significant energy used in the world – to their great advantage. At first it was cheap. Colonial powers discovered massive stores of fossil fuel in subjected territories, and set about developing ways of using it. This led pretty soon to runaway growth in our energy needs (which had been quite modest up till then).

Today we are in crisis. Energy has become the one resource that is most likely to drag nations and the world into war – its done so a couple of times recently. The problem is not that energy is running out – quite the contrary. The universe appears to provide almost infinite amounts of it, in largely untapped and renewable forms. The real problem is that states control it. Remember, this situation has overtaken us really quickly. Zoom back to 1807… What were people doing? They were helping themselves! And their governments had not the slightest interest in getting involved. I can imagine they avoided such commitments nimbly. If you wanted hot water or home heating, you got wood or peat or dried cowdung and burned it. And if this was not absolutely free, it certainly was part of a local limited economic chain. And sustainable.

In fact, it was this dependence on renewable but very limited resources that kept explosive development and population growth in check. In other words, an economical and ecological balance was maintained. The sudden use of fossil fuels added, to man-hours, almost uncapped potential virtual man-hours. And at the same time it gave birth to megalithic corporate states with ever more totalitarian powers.

We have nearly reached the end of stage one of the Energy Revolution, the fossil fuel or carbon era. For stage two, many hopefuls are waiting in the wings to take us beyond. Wind, sun, waves – and others – are amply able to provide vast amounts of electric power. Then there is nuclear power, hydrogen, various forms of thermodynamic and chemical latent energy. We have not even started to imagine what the search for the Higgs Boson may reveal, but it may seem quite, magically, miraculous. E=mc²… this means that in the universe, if you take all the mass there is (yourself, interstellar dust, gas and dark matter plus the boring old stars and lumps of rock out there, quite a lot of them), multiply this by the speed of light, 670 million miles per hour, multiply your answer by the speed of light AGAIN, you will have calculated just how much energy exists in the universe.

Our, human, energy needs, now and forever, are insignificantly tiny considering what’s out there.

So. There is enough energy. More than enough. It should be free. And yet, it will never be as long as we keep expecting (or are given no choice for) states to deal it out. They have become so fat on energy, taking it from them will be like pulling teeth. Energy IS their teeth! Imagine what will happen if suddenly, whole communities become self sufficient and fail to see the need to pay large rates and taxes bills any more.

Remember the parable of the Boiled Frog – whether true or not. Put a frog in a pot of cold water, put the pot on the stove and turn the stove on. Apparently – and here we have to rely on the word of some anonymous psychopathic scientist – the frog’s nervous system is unable to notice a slow gradual increase in heat until its dead. Don’t try this at home, but true or not, it’s a useful simile for my argument.

Between 1807 and today, we’ve been frogs. We have let ourselves believe that we need states to supply energy. We have become locked into one of the most inflexible economic dependencies the world has seen.

I think it can all be reversed painlessly, though. Although I myself am largely off-grid, there is no self-congratulation or moral posing. It has taken incremental years and is not easy. There are many pitfalls, the greatest perhaps being that we merely swap a state dependency for a corporate one. I realised this after several years of solar powered equipment, when it all started needing expensive replacements and overhauls. So while we people on the ground feel the desire to be off-grid, corporations are gearing up to make a lot of money from this.

I want to introduce to you my idea of Capital Energy vs Vernacular Energy ©, so please read on.

The answer, to me, is to go low-tech and to reduce our expectations as far as possible. Systems should be locally made and repairable. This returns us to a pre1807 balance of neither living beyond our means nor expecting Big Brother to carry us. We humans are remarkably resourceful and vigorous animals with self-improving powers; yet we become flabby sitcom cripples in the twinkling of an eye. We might all be in wheelchairs considering the imbalance in the flow of resources towards us. States serve us, indeed, but in the way that farmers serve finely ground GM soya to chickens – as long as the eggs are laid. Without realising it, we also give a great deal back in exchange.

I said earlier that stage two will have many alternatives to fossil fuel to choose from. Now Capital Energy is energy that can only be harnessed using state or corporate capital. It takes big resources to develop oils wells on land or sea. Wave power is no option for a little old lady in a seaside cottage. And I have decided not to run my farm with a pocket nuclear reactor. The resources that only Big Brother can exploit do, definitely, have their place. But there is another, entry-level source, which is Vernacular Energy. It is freely available and the means to exploit it are available to individuals. Some are cheap and low tech.

Solar water heating, electricity generation, we are familiar with these. The scope however is much, much bigger. There is private transport, for example. Back in the day, we used our own horse that grazed our own grass. We need to unboil our froggy brains to get back to this sort of individual freedom.

I recently read all about the new South African electric car about to be released. The Joule is revolutionary, stylish, sufficient and impressive as a car. I admire its truly professional design and applaud its designers. But – and this is a big one – its batteries remain the property of the supplier and you must perforce rent them, and they may only be charged on mains supplies. Damn it! In one stroke, the Joule takes us to the very brink of total independence and then jerks us back to corporate and state bondage. Why was I so stupid to think a company would be even slightly altruistic?

I want a car I can charge from my own solar (or whatever) generators, for free. I want my transport to be as free as the backyard horse. And do the Joule designers really think that after the country’s recent debilitating power outages (or in real English power failures), all South African households will blithely plug their cars in every night?

HUH?

The answer of course, is to get a Joule or Joule-like, car, circumvent the battery contract and use a home made power source. But I’m starting to spiral off the thread. The point is that Vernacular Energy is available for every household’s needs, including transport. We have only to GO there.

Capital Energy has its place, and always will. Public transport, health, industry, the military and so on… but why should it go to households? Only because we’re become so lazy. A growth of Vernacular Energy use will not only free up Capital Energy for where its really needed, but it should downsize government. This will not happen overnight, and if too dramatic it will provoke oppositional reactions and regulations. So I suggest that what needs to happen is that we, the people, start slowly boiling our froggy governments.

In Thomas Young’s world, all energy was vernacular. It was available locally, at little cost. No one complained. Its possible now.

The earth receives (and loses) 24/7 huge quantities of electromagnetic energy. Life learned long, long ago to use it. Plants converted it chemically  and stored it. We call it food. Anyone warmed by a ray of sunshine is in the position to convert it too, and use it for any number of things. The trouble is, we have got used to just a few particular types of energy, and their gadgets. To take full, meaningful advantage of the birth of stage two in the energy revolution, many habits and expectations need to change.

All our domestic appliances and gadgets may soon survive only in museums. Well I hope so. Plasma screens, bread machines, fridges and stoves in their present forms can not be fuelled by Vernacular Energy. I could be wrong of course, things may stay as they are, but this will happen at the expense of ever increasing levels of environmental devastation, political imbalance and social illness.

But don’t worry about losing all those wonderful doodahs – low tech can also be high tech, paradoxically. Its just a question of our comprehension of our gadgets. We need never be starved of the wonderful new things we have become used to looking forward to. Technologies are ever-improving.

Comparing our energy use today with Young’s world gives a very useful perspective. It would have seemed crazy in that green and quiet time that one’s energy consumption was anyone else’s concern. And truly, it is crazy. History could have flowed differently. Its just a fluke that fossil fuel (in the hands of a few)  was the driving force for development, after all, electricity was known to come from other sources first. But it led to central control of Energy, and it was a better product than Coca Cola.